


Full Moon Nights

by Sholio



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Developing Friendships, F/M, Gen, but not really enough to tag for it, it's basically pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 01:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15939245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.





	Full Moon Nights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



The wolves were howling in the woods again. Nancy shuddered and went to make sure the Byers' doors were locked and their dog was inside. Stupid Hawkins.

"I just made sure Will was in bed," Jonathan said quietly from the kitchen doorway, and Nancy looked around from checking the locks on the back door. Her boyfriend was leaning against the side of the kitchen doorway, a little bit hunched, his hands shoved into his pockets, and the entire picture made her smile fondly. He just never quite stopped looking at her that way, with a soft wondering love, as if he never quite could convince himself that she wasn't going to vanish like a dream.

"So it's just the two of us, half a bowl of popcorn, and a half-finished movie." She decided the door wasn't going to get any more locked, and went over to put her arms around his neck.

"And Mom's not back 'til after midnight," he murmured, sliding a hand shyly down her back. She giggled against his mouth.

\-- and something slammed into the back door, making them both jump. Jonathan gave a tiny yelp. They both spun around to stare at the door.

"Maybe it was the wind," Nancy said, taking a deep breath, and then there was a loud, frantic knocking on the door.

Jonathan reached quietly for a saucepan on the kitchen stove. Nancy quietly picked up a much heavier cast-iron skillet, and they both crept toward the door.

"I know you're in there!" Steve Harrington's voice whispered loudly. "Open up!"

Nancy lowered the skillet, Jonathan lowered the saucepan, and they looked at each other.

"It never fails," Jonathan said grimly. "Never freaking fails."

"Guys," Steve whispered loudly, "come on, please, it's important," and the sheer desperate _panic_ in his voice was what made Nancy, with an apologetic glance at Jonathan, throw back the lock on the door.

Steve stumbled into the kitchen. He didn't look bloody or even particularly disheveled, aside from a few leaves in his hair, but he did look white-faced and panicked. "Oh hi," he said, panting a little, "sorry," and he fumbled with the locks, making several attempts to lock the door before Nancy took pity on him and stepped in.

"Steve," said Jonathan, who still had hold of the saucepan, "is something chasing you?"

"No," Steve said. "No, not really ... do you have a basement?"

"No?"

"Shit," Steve said. "Shit, shit, shit. Your shed ... how sturdy is it?"

"You've been in the shed," Jonathan said. He exchanged another look at Nancy, who quietly picked her skillet back up.

"Steve," Nancy said carefully, letting the skillet dangle down behind her back, "are you feeling all right?"

"Fine," Steve said. "No. Not so fine. Just a problem, tiny problem -- is there a good lock on your shed?"

"Steve, you're not really reassuring us here," Nancy said. He was sweating, she was alarmed to see, even though it was March in Indiana, after dark, and therefore not particularly warm. He really looked bad, pale and shocky and trembling.

"Damn it," Steve mumbled to himself. He turned away and ran a shaking hand over his face. "Damn it, I shouldn't have come, I just can't think, there's just no -- _damn!_ Jonathan, how sturdy is your trunk?"

"In my car?" Jonathan asked blankly.

"No, in your swimming pool! Yes, the trunk of your car!"

"Uh, okay, I guess? I mean, it's an ordinary car -- Steve, what the hell is going on?"

Steve took a deep breath, turned around and looked at the two of them. "Put me in your trunk."

"What," Nancy said.

"There's no time to explain." He jerked, a weird full-body twitch, and Nancy and Jonathan both stared at him. "Just -- I'll explain later! I hope! Lock me in your trunk and then go in the house and make sure the door is locked. If you have a gun, that'd be good too."

"This is _so_ not reassuring," Nancy said.

Steve made a frustrated "Gah!" noise and stumbled toward the front door; they both recoiled out of his way. He bounced off the kitchen doorframe and staggered across the living room. Chester growled at him and slunk off into Joyce's bedroom.

"Steve," Jonathan said cautiously, as he and Nancy trailed Steve at a distance, "do you have rabies?"

This provoked a small huff of a laugh. "No, no, the problem is ..." Steve turned around from fumbling with the front door locks, stared at both of them for a moment, and then jerked all over again. He looked like he was in pain. "The problem is," he said all in a rush, "I'm a werewolf and I'm about to turn into a wolf and kill both of you, so _lock me in the trunk right now!"_

There had been a time in her life when Nancy would've just laughed, but that was before she fought a Demogorgon and helped drive a mind-possessing alien out of Jonathan's little brother. She lunged forward and unlocked the door for him, noticing as she did so that the reason why he was having so much trouble with doors now was because his hands, half withdrawn into the sleeves of his jacket, had fingers that were half their normal length, with claws.

They all piled out into the Byers' driveway. Jonathan hastily unlocked his trunk and started pawing out junk onto the gravel. Steve started to shuck off his jacket and then muttered, "Fuck it," and climbed in, crushing a cardboard box and some old milk cartons. He had to double up his long legs to fit. It really did not look comfortable.

"Steve --" Nancy was starting to have profound second thoughts. "Steve, what if you suffocate in there? How long are we supposed to keep you in there? What do you mean, you're a werewolf?"

"Easy question first," Steve said, in a voice that almost sounded normal. "Let me out at dawn, not before, and only if I stop sounding like I'm trying to claw my way out. As for the rest of it, uh ..." Another shudder ran through him. "Figure it out!" he said in a voice rising to a yelp that, to Nancy's horror, didn't sound entirely human. "And don't open this trunk for _anything!"_ And he fumbled with it, trying to slam it from the inside. Jonathan pushed it down until it clicked.

Nancy and Jonathan were left standing in the driveway, behind Jonathan's car, staring at the trunk of the car. Nancy had left the skillet in the house; she'd dropped it while she was opening the door, and now her hands felt very empty of weapons. Jonathan still clutched the aluminum saucepan like a lifeline.

"Guys?" Will called quietly from the door. "Why are you outside?"

"Shhh!" Nancy and Jonathan both hissed in unison, just as there was a loud thump from inside the trunk.

They both backed away. Nancy wished she had the skillet, or Steve's nailbat, or anything other than her bare hands.

"Guys, what's going on?" Will asked, padding barefoot out on the porch. Chester shot past him into the driveway, came to a screeching halt on the gravel, lowered his ears and tail, and slunk back into the house.

There were more thumps from the trunk, and a horrendous cracking sound that Nancy didn't even want to know about, and then a low, deep, tearing growl, like a piece of heavy cloth being torn in two. It was not a sound that Nancy could imagine coming from a human throat.

"He's actually serious," Jonathan whispered. His shoulder bumped hers.

Nancy took the aluminum saucepan out of his cold, half-limp fingers and gripped it firmly. She wasn't sure what this would do against a wolf, but it was better than nothing.

"Will," Jonathan called, his voice cracking in the middle, "get back in the house, now."

"Go make sure Will's safe," Nancy told him. "I'll ... uh ..." The car rocked on its wheels as whatever was now inside the trunk, whatever had been Steve Harrington, snarled and, from the sound of things, tore at the trunk's lining.

"He said to go inside!" Jonathan pulled at her arm, and reluctantly she stumbled along with him, while the car creaked and rocked on its rusty springs.

They met Will on the porch, crowded him into the house, and slammed the door and locked it. Will stared at them.

"So, buddy," Jonathan said with forced cheerfulness, "want to watch the rest of _Flashdance_ with us?"

"No," Will said, round-eyed. "What's in your trunk?"

"Nothing," Nancy said quickly.

"... that won't keep 'til morning," Jonathan finished for her. "C'mon, buddy, I'll make some hot cocoa, and we'll watch the movie."

Three people had never paid less attention to a movie in the history of cinema. All three of them kept staring at the door. Chester had made himself scarce. Every once in a while, a muffled yelp or growl, or the creak of Jonathan's car's springs, could be heard from outside. So far the trunk seemed to be holding.

"What is it?" Will asked as the credits rolled on the movie. "Another Demogorgon? Why won't you _tell_ me?"

"Because it's awful," Nancy said quickly. "It's really awful, and we'll deal with it in the morning, okay?"

"You're supposed to be in bed, buddy," Jonathan told him. "You can have Chester in there with you, if you want."

"Whatever's in your car --"

"We'll take care of it," Jonathan promised.

He chivvied Will off toward bed, while Nancy went to the door. She hesitated, her fingers on the lock, then quickly unlocked it and cracked the door open.

She wasn't sure what made her do it. She didn't plan to open the trunk, but she felt bad for him, all crammed in there like that. How big was a werewolf, anyway? Bigger than Steve was normally? It had to be pretty awful in there, all claustrophobic and trapped.

Standing in the doorway, she heard frantic, muffled snarling. Her throat tightened.

"Steve?" she called, and the sound of Steve Harrington tearing up the inside of her boyfriend's trunk abruptly stopped.

In the fog-draped night, the silence itself felt ominous. It was very dark out here, Nancy noticed as she tiptoed down the porch steps.

"Hey, Steve," she called quietly. "I'm, uh ..." Beside the porch, she found an old 2x4, which felt solid and sturdy in her grasp. "I'm coming down, okay?"

There was still an ominous silence from the trunk, broken eventually by a tiny, questioning growl.

Nancy rounded the corner of the car with the 2x4 tipped over her shoulder like a bat. "You're still in there, I guess," she told the trunk warily.

No response, then a small scrabbling noise.

"No, you can't come out. You made that very clear." She hesitantly took a hand off the 2x4 and patted the trunk. "You'll just stay safe in there 'til, um, daylight. Or whatever."

There was no response. Nancy, after a pause, sat down on the gravel. This close, she thought she could hear something breathing inside the trunk, fast and almost panicked. There was a smell, too. She wasn't quite sure what it was, something rank and animalistic. If she didn't know better, she'd say it was the smell of anger or fear.

It was hard not to feel sorry for him. She wondered how much a werewolf understood of what was happening around it. Did it know that it was locked up of its own free will? How much of its reaction just now had been sheer panic?

 _It's Steve,_ she told herself. _You saw him get in there. Maybe he's just playing a prank._

But she listened to the ragged panting, and smelled the faint animal musk on the air, and knew that he wasn't.

"Nancy!" Jonathan's low, terrified cry came from the porch.

"Over here," she called softly. From within the trunk there was soft scrabbling, as of claws, and then silence.

"Jesus, Nancy." Jonathan slid to a halt beside her and looked down at her, taking in the 2x4 and her position next to the trunk. "What are you doing? He's, uh, he's --"

"I know." She patted the gravel beside her. After a reluctant moment, Jonathan sat down. "I don't know what he's doing now. Just being quiet, I guess."

"Playing a joke?"

She shook her head. "If it is, he's awfully committed to it."

"We could open the trunk and find out."

They both looked at it; then Nancy said, "No."

They sat quietly for a few minutes, his hand on her leg. All was quiet; even the ragged breathing inside the trunk had quieted to nothing. Occasionally a passing car could be heard through the trees screening the Byers' long driveway.

Nancy was almost drowsing, her head on Jonathan's shoulder, when a long, low howl came from the woods. She jerked upright, just in time to hear a thump and scrabble from inside the trunk, and then a soft, mournful whine. It sounded like the Byers' dog when no one would give him table scraps.

"Nancy," Jonathan whispered.

"I know."

They both scrambled to their feet. The howls rose eerily, their exact direction hard to pinpoint.

From inside the trunk came a low, desperate whine and the sound of snuffling around the lock.

"Jonathan," Nancy said softly. "Maybe we should let him out. Let him, um, go ... be with the other wolves?"

"He told us not to. Not that I'm in the habit of doing what Steve Harrington says, but ... uh ..." Jonathan jerked his head toward the trunk. "He was pretty adamant about it."

The trunk whined sadly.

"I can hit him if he tries anything when he's out," Nancy said, swinging the 2x4 experimentally.

"Nancy, no. Do you know how big wolves are?"

They both went to sit on the porch, where they could get inside the house if needed. The howls still rose from the woods occasionally, and sometimes Nancy could hear a soft scrabble or whine from the trunk.

When she was a child, she used to hear howling in the woods and think it was dogs howling around the neighborhood. That was what the adults always said. Then she got a little older, and she saw some things, and she started to think maybe it was always wolves, after all.

The trunk gave a low, pained-sounding howl.

Nancy was already starting to rise before her conscious mind kicked in -- but Jonathan's hand was on her wrist, pulling her back down.

"Nance! That's what he said not to do. _Exactly_ what he said not to do."

She was quiet for a few minutes. Then: "Do you have any nails in the shed?"

"Nancy --"

"Look." She swung the 2x4, let it whistle softly through the air. "He knows what that is. He knows what it does. We can't leave him in there all night. He's got no air, no water -- it isn't fair."

Jonathan sighed and got up.

She hammered in the nails as quietly as she could, crouching in the driveway behind Jonathan's car and using an old T-shirt of Jonathan's (found among the junk he'd flung out of the car) to muffle the hammer blows. When she was done, the 2x4 was an ugly weapon, bristling with nails and with no good place to hold it. Nancy wrapped the top end with the T-shirt to give herself a better grip.

The trunk had been quiet all this time, except for an occasional soft, sad whine. It hadn't made any noise in the last few minutes.

"Okay," Nancy said softly. She got a feel for the makeshift nailbat, cocked it carefully over her shoulder. "Open it, and then run for the house."

"You're not supposed to run from predators."

"Or stay in the house, I can --"

"Nance, just -- please --" Jonathan gave her a quick kiss, with an element of desperation in it. As he pulled back, he said quietly, "If he was anyone else, would you --"

"I'd still let him out," she said flatly, not appreciating the implications in the slightest, "because spending a night in a car trunk is a horrible thing."

The little sigh he gave was resigned, but somehow just the slightest bit amused. He twisted the key in the lock and then jumped away as he gave it a thrust upward, leaping back to get clear of Nancy's swinging arm.

The trunk was full to the brim with dark gray fur.

So much for any possibility that Steve had been playing a trick on them. Nancy stepped back, the substitute nailbat cocked over her shoulder. "Steve?" she said loudly.

The great dark heap of fur lurched and rippled and stirred. Its head came up, ears pricked toward her.

Nancy stared.

She had never seen an actual wild wolf outside of Lorne Greene-narrated TV specials. She had expected something horrible, an Ice Age monster, or at best, perhaps something like a dog.

She hadn't been prepared for something beautiful.

Steve -- the shaggy black-and-gray brindled thing that had been Steve -- gazed at her with softly luminous amber eyes. Then its ears went slowly down, and Nancy took a step back, her teeth clenched. She didn't know much about dog/wolf body language, except to know that flattened ears were a very bad sign.

Jonathan seemed to be aware of the same. He tensed as if to make a move, but the dark gray hump of fur lurched and rose, and Steve leaped out of the trunk in a single graceful bound, landing on the gravel in front of them. The interior of the trunk was shredded, the cardboard box ripped apart and bits of it clinging to Steve's fur.

Only now that it was too late, Nancy realized how huge he was. It was true, she _hadn't_ known how big wolves were. The shaggy hump of his shoulders and the dark gray stripe down his spine came almost all the way up to her waist. His ears and tail were down. 

Mouth dust-dry, she stepped back, bumping into Jonathan. She wondered how many hits she could get in with the spiked board, how hard she could hit, how many strikes she could make before it would splinter --

The wolf took a cringing step forward, one step, then two. It whined softly, and then, just like a dog, it lay down at her and Jonathan's feet, settling first its hind end and then its forequarters. It laid its great shaggy head on its paws, ears flat to its skull, and looked up at her beseechingly.

The expression made her think less of a terrifying predator than of Chester begging at the table for a piece of chicken.

"Jonathan ..." she murmured.

"I don't know!" Jonathan sounded almost panicked. 

Wolf-Steve didn't move a muscle.

\-- until another of those low, wild howls rose from the woods. Nancy flinched as Steve sprang to his feet, graceful power evident in every ripple of the muscles under his fur. Just as she was getting the 2x4 in place for a strike, he moved around them, making no sound, and faced the woods.

All the fur rose along his spine. His ears were flat to his skull, which gave Nancy the odd realization that this was a very different expression from the pleadingly lowered ears earlier; there were different kinds of lowered ears on a dog-shaped body, and these were threatening. His other body language, she now realized, hadn't carried a hint of threat.

Steve backed up until his furry hindquarters nearly bumped into her, still pointed toward the woods, his body stiff.

The howls rose again, echoing, wild, and not very far away. Steve moved slowly around to follow the sound, keeping his body between Nancy and Jonathan and the woods. A low growl, barely enough to hear, vibrated his rib cage, but Nancy checked her hair-trigger-nerve instinct to swing the 2x4, because a bizarre yet weirdly plausible theory had occurred to her.

"I think he's trying to protect us," she murmured to Jonathan.

"What?"

A moment later, Steve whisked around and bumped Jonathan's leg with his head. Jonathan jerked away, and Nancy came very near trying to brain Steve with the spiked 2x4, but Steve bumped into the back of Jonathan's legs, and then hers, and it became very evident that they were being herded to the house, as if he was a large brindle-gray collie.

"I think he wants us in the house," she said helplessly, as they were herded that way by a gangly wolf the size of a small pony.

"I guess so?" Jonathan said, wild-eyed.

Steve herded them deftly onto the porch, then planted himself on the porch between them and the dark woods, and growled menacingly. To her own amazement, Nancy no longer felt any sense of menace directed at _her_ in that sound. It was very clearly aimed out at the woods.

They both nearly collided with Will in the doorway.

"What are you _doing?"_ Will whispered, very loudly.

"God! Get _away_ \--" Jonathan grabbed him and all but threw him into the house; it was the roughest Nancy had ever seen him behave with his brother. An instant later, his hand closed on her shoulder and hauled her backward after them. She had been staring, still, past Steve's low gray ears into the woods.

Jonathan slammed the door.

"Guys, what?" Will began nervously.

"I think you should let Steve in," Nancy said. She glanced at the door.

"He's a literal, actual werewolf!" Jonathan protested.

"What?" Will said. 

"He doesn't seem dangerous," Nancy went on.

"Absolutely not. He's not coming in here. Not with my _brother_ here. Nancy!"

"I don't think he's trying to hurt us," she said slowly. Carefully, she pulled back the curtain and looked out the window at Steve's lean gray form stretched out and aimed at the woods like a lupine missile.

"I don't _care._ Will is --"

"Hey." Will held a hand up. "Do I get a say? Is there an actual werewolf out there? 'cause I want to see."

"It's Steve," Jonathan said. "You've seen him."

"Steve's a werewolf?!"

Nancy craned at the window. "Apparently."

"Dude," Will said. "Dustin is gonna be so jealous."

 

***

 

They went and made hot cocoa, since Will showed no signs of going back to bed. All three of them took turns tiptoeing over to the door to look out at Steve on the porch, alert and tense, nose pointed at the woods. Nancy could still hear occasional howls rising eerily outside in the woods, growing more distant.

"Are you sure it's Steve?" Will whispered loudly, as they all sat on the couch and sipped their cooling cocoa and kept having to rewind and rewatch parts of a movie no one was paying any attention to. "I mean, it could be like, a stray dog? Maybe?"

"We locked Steve in the trunk of Jonathan's car and then there was a wolf in there," Nancy whispered back. "We're pretty sure."

"It's not your problem, buddy," Jonathan told him. "He's not getting in here."

"He doesn't seem that scary," Will said. "I mean, it's _Steve._ He's, like. Kind of a dork. And he's sort of like Dustin's big brother or something. He took us to the movies last week." 

"You didn't see what he did to my car," Jonathan muttered.

The night wore on, they finally made it to the end of the movie, and Will had fallen asleep with a blanket wrapped around him and his head in Jonathan's lap. Nancy had settled in a chair beside the couch and had her feet up, sock-clad toes tucked under Jonathan's opposite thigh.

There was a sudden creaking from the porch that made them both jump and Will give a tiny, mumbled, "Wuzzit?"

Nancy got up and went quickly to the door, while Jonathan laid a protective arm over Will.

It was raining softly. She hadn't even noticed, between the noise of the movie and their whispered conversation. 

Steve, or the wolf that had been Steve, was standing up now. He stretched all over, a ripple passing down his furry body. Once again, she was struck by the sheer wild beauty of him. Steve was athletic, and could be charming, but in kind of a preppy-dork way. This fierce, powerful creature was utterly unlike the Steve she knew.

And yet, there _was_ something of Steve in him as he trotted down the porch steps. He glanced back toward the house, ears dipping in a more doglike look -- also a more Stevelike look. Rain frosted his furry body. He looked wistful and lonely, like a dog left out in the rain.

Nancy took a deep breath and stepped quickly out onto the porch, closing the door behind her on Jonathan's protesting "Nancy!"

"Hey," she said. Steve stopped, still half-turned, looking up at her with yellow half-moon eyes that somehow managed to be Stevelike and wolflike at the same time. "You don't have to go. It's cold and wet out here. We could, uh. You could sleep in the shed, maybe?"

 

***

 

They ended up letting him into the kitchen, while Jonathan gripped the 2x4 and stayed between Steve and Will, who was in the kitchen doorway, the blanket draped around him, wide-eyed with incredulous amazement.

Steve shook himself all over, flinging water droplets everywhere.

"God, Steve," Nancy said before she even thought about it, exactly as she would have to human Steve, and the look he gave her was 100% Steve, even if it was conveyed partly with sheepish, drooping ears.

"Can I pet him?" Will said from the doorway.

"No!" Nancy and Jonathan chorused.

But Will had already stepped forward, hand held out as if to pet a strange dog. Jonathan grabbed him and pulled him back.

Steve put his ears and tail down, and lay down on the kitchen floor, much as he had with Nancy and Jonathan earlier. His ears pricked then, pointed hopefully toward Will. It was so doglike, and so Stevelike, that Nancy wanted to laugh.

"I don't think he's going to bite me," Will said. "I _really_ want to be able to tell Mike and Dustin and Lucas that I petted a werewolf. You have no idea."

"If he bites you, I'll brain him with this," Jonathan said, waving the 2x4 and nearly clipping Nancy in the ear.

Will crouched down, the ends of the blanket trailing across the floor. "Hey, uh, Steve." He held out a hand. Steve sniffed it and gave a cautious swish of his tail. "I know, huh? Pretty weird. Can you understand me?"

The tail swished again and Steve's ears flicked. Nancy had no idea if that meant yes or was just Steve reacting to Will's tone of voice.

"Can I pet you? Is that weird?"

Steve's ears lowered in that pathetic beseeching kind of way he had. He looked hopeful.

"Okay," Will said, and scratched the top of Steve's head and behind his ears. Steve closed his eyes blissfully.

Nancy and Jonathan exchanged a look. Nancy had a feeling Jonathan's face reflected her own current feelings of _What the actual fuck._

"I can't wait to tell Dustin about this," Will began.

Then a car door slammed in the driveway, and they all shared a horrified look as Steve's head came up, ears alerting.

"Mom," Jonathan said.

There was a wild scramble, punctuated by "Will, bed, now!" and "Can we put him in the basement?" and "We don't have a basement!" 

They ended up shoving Steve into Jonathan's room. Nancy, who wasn't supposed to be here either, plunked down on Jonathan's bed and sat nervously in the dark room, lit only by a strip of light under the door that limned Steve's shaggy fur as he lay on the floor beside the bed. Out in the living room, she could hear Jonathan trying to have a casual conversation with his mom, and from what she could hear, failing utterly. Luckily Joyce was too tired and too ... well ... Joyce to have entirely noticed. 

Nancy looked down and realized her hand had dropped down to idly scratch at the shaggy fur on Steve's back. "Sorry," she whispered, jerking it away.

Steve thumped his tail.

"Yeah, not making it less weird."

Footsteps went down the hall, water ran in the bathroom, and the door opened to admit a sliver of light along with Jonathan. He closed it quickly behind him and giggled nervously.

"Is your mom suspicious?" Nancy whispered.

"Well ... yeah ... but I think she just kinda thinks I have you in here and don't want to admit -- ack!" Jonathan stumbled over Steve in the dark. "Steve!"

Steve thumped his tail and there was the sound of a large wolf shuffling around in a small bedroom to make room. Jonathan plunked down on the bed beside Nancy and, in the dark, found her hand and laced their fingers together. She leaned into him and gave in to her own urge to laugh nervously.

"So now what?" she whispered.

"I dunno. I guess maybe we could wait 'til Mom goes to bed and sneak Steve out."

As if in response to his words, a renewed drumming of rain burst on the roof. Both of them looked up, and then down toward Steve. He was nearly invisible in the dark, but his eyes glimmered in the light coming from under the door.

"I should take you home anyway," Jonathan whispered. "I can probably fit him in the backseat too, and drop him off somewhere."

"My parents think I'm at Ally's," Nancy whispered back. "It'll be worse if they catch me sneaking back in. As long as Mike doesn't rat me out, the little jerk."

"Yeah, but what about Steve?"

"I guess he could sleep on the floor in here? Your mom wouldn't come in here, would she??

"Not tonight, probably. I think she's just going to bed."

Steve thumped his tail and leaned against the bed, making the frame creak.

"Right," Jonathan sighed.

 

***

 

Nancy woke stiff and cramped, with gray morning light coming through the blinds. She was contorted in the too-narrow bed, twisted around Jonathan, still wearing most of her clothes. Neither of them had been entirely comfortable undressing with Steve lying on the floor, even if he was wolf-shaped. Actually, Steve being wolf-shaped made it _more_ weird, not less.

She cautiously raised her head and discovered that Steve was still on the floor, still fast asleep, but no longer wolf-shaped. 

And therefore very naked.

Nancy could feel her face turning pink. It wasn't like she'd never seen a naked Steve before, but this just upped the awkward factor by about a zillion percent.

From the living room came distant clattering sounds. Nancy's face flamed hotter. This was _not_ the kind of situation she wanted Jonathan's mom to walk in on. 

She leaned down and slapped Steve lightly on his bare shoulder. "Hey!" she whispered. "Sleeping beauty!"

Steve woke with a snort, and looked up at her blearily with his hair in his eyes and an expression of flatlined zero-IQ bafflement on his face, which slowly changed into horror in a way that would have been hilarious if they hadn't been dealing with the risk of Jonathan's mom knocking on the door at any moment.

Beside her in the bed, Jonathan woke with a small jerk. He raised a sleep-tousled head, looked over the side of the bed at Steve, groaned and dropped his head back onto the pillow.

"Jonathan!" Nancy whispered, poking at him. "Jonathan, your mom's up."

"I was kind of hoping it was all a dream," Jonathan mumbled without opening his eyes.

"Come on, get up, we need clothes for Steve and _you_ need to get out there and make sure your mom doesn't come in here -- Jonathan, are you listening?"

"Aargh," Jonathan muttered. He tried to roll out of bed and ended up getting tangled up with Nancy and nearly falling on top of Steve, who yelped and scrambled out of the way, at which point the two of them were treated to _all_ of naked Steve instead of just _most_ of naked Steve.

Steve grabbed for the nearest item large enough to cover himself, the blanket that Jonathan and Nancy had been lying on top of, which they were still mostly on top of. When he gave it a yank, they tumbled onto the floor, knocking over a chair and a lamp. Steve lunged for Jonathan's tottering stereo and caught it before it fell, dropping the blanket in the process.

"Jonathan, honey?" Joyce said from the other side of the door, and they all froze: Steve holding the stereo, Nancy and Jonathan trying to untangle themselves on the floor. "Jonathan, is everything all right in there?"

"Fine!" Jonathan said in a slightly strangled voice. Nancy shifted her weight so she wasn't pressing down on his sternum.

"I have to go, sweetie. Can you make sure Will has breakfast? And that he takes along the workbooks for his math class when you drop him off at school?"

"Sure, Mom!"

"Good morning, Nancy," Joyce added as her footsteps creaked away in the hall.

Nancy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, and all three of them held their breath until the front door slammed. Then Jonathan said in a conversational tone, "Steve, would you like to borrow some pants?"

"Yes please," Steve said in a tone of infinite relief.

 

***

 

Will looked completely unsurprised when he came into the kitchen and found Jonathan making eggs and toast for four people instead of two. "Good morning, Steve," he said politely, as Nancy hastily dragged up another chair to make room at the table.

"Morning," Steve mumbled as Jonathan poured orange juice.

Nancy made coffee, because she figured they needed it.

The conversation was mostly limited to "Please pass the salt" until Jonathan got up to take Will to school; Will, however, hesitated in the doorway, clutching his book bag. "That was really cool last night," he said shyly to Steve. "I promise I won't tell." And then he fled. Steve looked somewhere between touched and embarrassed.

Jonathan lingered. "You gonna want a ride?"

"I can walk," Steve said, tearing apart a half-eaten piece of toast.

"I wouldn't mind a ride," Nancy said. "We'll clean up here if you can pick us up when you get back from the middle school."

Jonathan nodded and ducked out. After a quiet, awkward moment, Steve got up and picked up the plates.

"So are we going to talk about this at all?" Nancy asked, joining him at the sink.

"No?" Steve said hopefully.

"You're a werewolf, Steve. I'm not just going to let that go."

"Of course you're not," Steve muttered, scrubbing uselessly at a plate with his fingers. Nancy, with a small sigh, reached for a dishcloth and took the plate away from him.

"It's not that I'm trying to be nosy about ... okay, no, I really need to know a few things." Nancy waved soapy hands, sending droplets and suds flying. "Werewolves are a thing now? How are werewolves a thing? _Why_ are werewolves a thing? What is wrong with this town?"

"It's not Hawkins," Steve said. He turned away to fuss with folding a dish towel. "I've always been this way. It's just how my family is."

"Your entire family are werewolves?"

Steve nodded wordlessly, not looking at her.

"And you didn't think this tiny little fact was worth mentioning during the _year_ we were dating?"

He shrugged and refolded the towel, fussing with the corners. "I wanted to. I really did. And then, every time I thought about it, I thought about how that conversation was probably gonna go down. C'mon, Nance. What would you have said if I'd just, like, blurted it out on the bleachers during a game or something? 'By the way, I'm a werewolf.' _Think_ about it."

"Well, of course if you'd said it like _that_ , you idiot --"

A car door slammed outside. A moment later, Jonathan came into the kitchen. He looked back and forth between the two of them cleaning the kitchen in an awkward silence, and then cleared his throat. "So ... school?"

"I'll walk," Steve said quietly, and ducked out the door without another word.

 

***

 

Nancy was honestly expecting Steve to avoid them for the foreseeable future (as far as she could tell, he skipped school that day; she didn't see him around in the halls) but to her surprise, when she and Jonathan left Hawkins High, Steve was in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of his car which he'd drawn up next to Jonathan's.

"Pizza sound good?" was all he said.

They went to the food court in the new mall. In the most secluded corner they could find, over a large deep-dish pizza, Steve told them about werewolves.

"There aren't very many of us," he said quietly. "My family's been hiding in plain sight for a long time. Hawkins is a good sized town for us, big enough that my dad can run his business, but small enough to have the woods for, you know ... running around in."

"And it happens to you every full moon?" Nancy asked quietly. They were alone in their corner, but she still kept her voice low.

Steve nodded, looking embarrassed. "Moonrise to moonset, usually. By the way, dude, sorry about your trunk. I'll pay for that."

Jonathan acknowledged it with a nod. "So what _was_ all of that with locking you in the trunk, anyway? You made it sound like you were going to tear us limb from limb if we didn't lock you up. But once you were out, you were just like a ... big weird dog, basically. I don't want to put it like this, but how dangerous _are_ you?"

Steve's ears turned pink. He concentrated on eating his pizza.

"Jonathan!" Nancy said. 

"No, he's got a point," Steve said, not looking at either of them. "I'm just trying to figure out how to explain. I'm not exactly used to explaining this to people who don't already know. So the way it works ... er ... the way it's _supposed_ to work is that we're ordinary wolves as long as we're ..."

Steve hesitated and took a large bite of pizza.

"As long as you're what, Steve?" Nancy asked, because his blush was flaming now, and that didn't seem like a good sign.

"With our pack," Steve mumbled through his pizza. "And that means just our parents and families and ... um ... and our mates, Jonathan, _please_ don't hit me, I really didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, you didn't come to our house knowing you used to date Nancy and --"

"Wait, ordinary wolves as opposed to what?" Nancy asked.

Steve was looking at the wall, not at them. "You know. Ravening beasts. Total werewolf movie cliche."

"Wait," Jonathan said, "what?"

"Why do you _think_ I wanted you to lock me in your trunk?" Steve looked desperate now, almost wild-eyed. "If we're not with our pack, we lose control. There's a room in my folks' basement, we call it the panic room, where we can lock ourselves up if we have to, and it's ... it's not a good feeling." He swallowed, looking like the pizza was sticking in his throat. "It's always kind of hard to remember things from when you're a wolf, it's like your brain is too different or something, so it's mostly impressions of things, images, smells, that kind of thing. But this is different. All I ever remember is this ... this awful _rage,_ like all I can think about when I'm like that is tearing things apart. One time when I was a kid, my parents left me with, like, a second cousin of my mom's, a babysitter, and she _was_ a werewolf too, so she knew what was happening, but I didn't really know her very well, and was actually kind of scared of her, so ..." He swallowed again. "I destroyed her entire living room and ate her goldfish. Fish tank water leaves a really weird aftertaste, by the way."

"Steve," Nancy said when she could squeeze a word in, "you're babbling."

"Sorry. The point is, last night, I really thought I might hurt somebody."

He looked miserable. Jonathan looked pissed.

"Hurt somebody? Like us, for example? You came to _my_ house, where Will is --"

"I don't know, okay?" Steve looked truly desperate now. "I don't know why! I just knew I could feel the change coming on, and I didn't know where to go, I mean, I don't think too clearly in the day or so before a change and I just couldn't _think_ , I just thought I'd be safe there, and ... look, forget it, it won't happen again."

"Wait, wait, wait." Nancy put her hand on Jonathan's arm. "Steve, why weren't you with your pack yesterday? I assume that's what you normally do, especially if it keeps you from being, uh. Feral."

Steve grimaced and looked down at the table again. He started to take another bite of pizza, then put it down and shoved the paper plate away.

"Steve?" Nancy asked gently.

"I was late getting home, okay? It was stupid. My dad's told me that if I can't keep up with the pack, they'll leave me behind, it's just how it works, and I'm supposed to lock myself in the panic room if that happens. It's been happening a lot lately because I'm just bad at remembering. Which probably sounds stupid, you'd think something this important would be easy to remember, or at least I'd put it on the calendar, but it's just ..."

"Steve, I dated you for a year," Nancy said. "This doesn't come as a huge shock." She smiled a little. "I don't know if it helps, but you wouldn't believe how many pairs of underwear I've ruined because _I_ didn't remember what time of month it was, and I'm pretty good at this kind of thing. I think it's awful to leave you behind like that."

Steve smiled weakly. "Dad said they would. It's supposed to teach me responsibility."

"Your dad's a jerk," Jonathan said abruptly. "And I know about jerk dads, believe me."

Steve shrugged, not looking at them. "I dunno. I shouldn't have gone to you guys, I should've gone straight to the panic room, but I stayed out too late at the lake and then I couldn't even remember how to drive, let alone think of what to do. I should've just gone straight home, but I didn't even think of it. It won't happen again. At least I'll try not to let it."

Nancy shared a glance with Jonathan, trying to ask a question with her eyes. His expression was guarded, but he didn't say no. "Steve," she said, "if you're okay around us, as a wolf, I mean, is that going to change? I mean, you wouldn't suddenly get aggressive or anything, right?"

Steve looked baffled. She tried not to find the expression adorable. "I don't think so? I guess not. But I don't know. For whatever reason, the wolf in me reacts to you guys like you're pack. I don't know why it's doing that, so I don't know if it'll stop --"

"Steve, shut up."

He shut up.

Nancy cleared her throat and nudged Jonathan with her toe under the table. The faintest trace of a smile turned up the corner of Jonathan's mouth.

"I think what she's trying to say," Jonathan said, "is that we don't really mind hanging out with you as a wolf, as long as it's safe. I mean, if you ever need somewhere to go again."

Steve raised his head. Nancy could only describe his expression as a kid picked last at team sports who finally got picked first, which was ridiculous since Steve was the exact opposite of that, but it was what he looked like: startled, hopeful, cautiously delighted. "Really?"

"If the alternative is being locked up in a room all night clawing at the walls? Jeez, Steve," Nancy said. "We're not _jerks."_

"Yeah, but ..." Steve gestured at himself vaguely. "Not many people want to hang out with an apex predator at the full moon."

"I don't really have much of a social life anyway," Jonathan said, perfectly deadpan, and Nancy hid a laugh behind her hand.


End file.
